Freelancing – The first few months

At the start of 2015 I decided it was time for me to go freelancing again. Over the past couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to work within two great companies. Both of these companies have been early stage start ups and both are growing in a huge way Crowdfunder has been come a nationally recognised brand and the leading crowdfunding site in the UK. Made open is quickly becoming the go to solution for councils to engage more effectively with their voters. This has sold from Wales to Australia. Within both of these companies I’ve learnt so much, from new development techniques to how to promote and develop a business in the early stages.

Going freelance is obviously a huge decision and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Losing the regular pay cheque and the knowledge that every month your bills will be getting paid is a scary prospect. Thats always going to be the main worry with running any business, the fear of failure will stop you from doing anything if you let it. There are times you have to take a leap into the dark and understand that you have the chance to change your own future. The other side of the fear is the fact that you’re now your own boss you can go any where, do anything and all the choices are yours. Any problem is yours to solve any victory yours to enjoy. This is one of the biggest reasons for me going out there on my own. Its that perfect mix of exciting and slightly scary that I love.

So far I’ve been extremely lucky with the work that I’ve been finding. Last week I launched a new site for Turners Parks Group. This is a fully responsive wordpress build with custom plugins built to handle the listings and parks. I also suggested that the incorporate salesforce into the site to help manage their sales pipeline. Helping manage sales and new customers is one of the most important things to any business and giving them the ability to simply and easily manage this process from email to final sale. The biggest challenge with this job was the short timescale with only four weeks from receiving the original designs to launch. It was a very tight deadline but everything was completed on time even if there was a couple of extremely late nights had doing it.

Over the next few months I’m going out and finding new work but also looking at how I can develop my business in new ways and create new revenue streams. Its important for me not only to build a sustainable business but one that also has a social impact. Thats going to be the challenge over the next few months and will shape how I build my business.